


Why Azure Should Really Make Sure His Boyfriend Ain't A Cult Leader

by AzureNight



Category: Undertale (Video Game)
Genre: CCAU, Cage Crazy AU, Dreamswapfell, M/M, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-09
Updated: 2018-09-09
Packaged: 2019-07-10 04:52:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,909
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15942164
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AzureNight/pseuds/AzureNight
Summary: Do y'all remember the Fic Fic? Well here, have the CCAU version of it, because reasons.CCAU // writeformewittyDreamswap // onebizarrekai





	Why Azure Should Really Make Sure His Boyfriend Ain't A Cult Leader

****It is a completely normal and uninteresting day when it come the time to do an online survey on the public opinion of JR and Dream. These are conducted monthly, due to the need to regulate what info gets out about JR and needing to make it positive in the minds of others, it’s just the first time that _Dream_ decides to do one himself, as opposed to having underlings do it. The underlings still do the survey and scan the internet of course, but Dream does his as well.

 

The lackeys, however, are far more professional that Dream and comb through sources on cults, debate forums, online polls and the like. Dream, who knows that those parts of the internet are covered and doesn’t want to waste his time, instead simply types _Dream Von Licht_ into the search bar and browses through the results. One of the first things he comes across is an innocent little link, to an archive of fanworks that you might know of - archiveofourown.

 

 _[Not Wattpad, he would never touch_ **_Wattpad_ ** _. He’s a classy motherfucker and his choice of fanfiction website is to reflect that. Not that he knows it at the time, of course. Later on, when he’s more experienced, he will be incredibly glad he didn’t end up on Quotev or Wattpad_ **_._ ** _He can only imagine the horror, he could have never met his beloved boyfriend!]_

 

Dream, being whimsical and bored, clicks on the link, huffs when greeted by the _this is scary or mature or some shit be warned and stuff_ page pops up, mentally making a note to mess with that particular feature, and begins reading.

 

I’m sure you can all guess what particular type of fic he clicked on. For those who aren’t with the program just yet, it was an _x Reader_ . A _Dream x Reader_.

 

This… this intrigues him. And boosts his ego, that too, let’s not forget. But the fact that someone would spend time writing this, when it’s so blatantly _wrong_ is foolish to him. Well, it’s not like they can actually get the details needed to write them correctly, but whatever right? Some things are, okay, Dream will admit, a fairly logical conclusion to come to considering they aren’t him - one example would be him being considered a germaphobe due to his freaking out when there’s mud or sand ect. In his hair, despite that not being true in the the slightest; the texture messes with his head badly. Then there are the ones that are just so hilariously wrong that Dream wonders how exactly they came to the conclusion that he would react like this, like, in one fic… Well, here, have the extract:

 

   _You stared Dream straight in the eye, your glare defiant. “Are you going to get mad at me?” you asked, knowing the fate of those who’d defied him before. To your great surprise, Dream only laughed._

 

_“I like your confidence,” he said, matching your gaze, a smirk on his face._

 

Which just no, what the fuck that is so wrong okay? Dream would get mad and panic and probably kill the person, no stupid _power of love_ would stop that from happening, “(y/n)” would be dead if it were accurate.

 

Well. There are a _few_ passable fics out there - some of which he suspects are written by people who know or knew him personally, but he’s got nothing concrete - on which he leaves ridiculously sophisticated comments on. He leaves ridiculously sophisticated comments on almost any _Dream x Reader_ fic to be perfectly honest, even the really really shitty ones which were probably written by nine year olds who got an ao3 account without their parents’ permission, but that’s not important. What is important is that those nine year olds and their shitty fics are annoying the hell out of him.

 

So, like any person who’s dissatisfied with something, he goes around fixing his problem. Well not quite, fixing his problem would be hacking ao3 and having the fics deleted once and for all, but that’s honestly too much effort to expend right now so instead he decides that he’s going to write his own, something which I really hope none of you are surprised by because this thing is literally called _The Fic Fic 2.0_.

 

He gets himself an ao3 account, calls himself DerangedAngel, and calls his fic _Angel in a Madhouse_ , the _Angel_ part referring to the reader and the _Madhouse_ part referring to JR, and the first chapter is fucking 10k, not a single spelling mistake in sight, everything perfectly formatted, and all the correct techniques writing are used. It gains 200 hits in 12 hours, which is fairly abnormal for a first work by a writer who wasn’t promoted by anyone else. Spurred on by such success, he releases a second chapter shortly. Really shortly. The next day, in fact. This chapter is also ten thousand words long, which in and of itself is impressive, then there’s also the fact that he wrote it in a single day.

 

Dream’s writing is absolutely flawless, no typos or mistakes with continuity even in the drafts, and ridiculously fast to boot. He establishes an upload schedule, releasing a 10-30k chapter every week, no one knows how he does it, and he makes a seperate fic to release teaser parts of the next chapter, a paragraph or two from here and there, maybe one thousand words a week of previews.

 

The first time he gets a positive comment he just sort of stares at his screen for a second, mildly confused, before deciding that this is yet another way to fuck with people, and proceeds to answer it with the most horribly messed up grammar, no capitals, no punctuation, slang and abbreviations, everything and everything he can do to make it look like he’s not the one who’s replying to the comments. People start thinking it’s two people running one account as Dream just laughs manically behind his screen.

 

It’s been about a month since Dream started writing when XxXGamer_FireXxX, otherwise known as Azure, comes into the picture.. He’s idly looking through ao3, trying to find a way to relieve his boredom, and in a DM chat with Emotional-Charcoal, Emo for short, one of his long time friends on discord and tumblr and also secretly Ink, when Emo recommends this _Dream x Reader_ fic to him.

 

\---

 

Azure stared at his computer screen. That was… definitely not what he’d expected when his pal Emotional-Charcoal, known on the internet as Emo and in real life as Ink, had told him he had a really good fic for him to read. A _Dream x Reader_ was the last thing he was ever going to read, besides, he knew the man, and he was most definitely not someone who would let anyone get close enough to write accurate fanfiction about himself, barring perhaps Ink, but Azure already knew that Ink couldn’t be bothered to write fanfiction about his boss. That he read fanfiction about his boss though, was news to Azure.

 

   **Emo:** cmon why not

 

 **Firex:** I don’t like reading X Readers of real people Emo, you know this.

 

 **Emo:** yeah but this guy youll never meet and its not like he knows about you reading it

   **Emo:** please read it this one is fucking amazing and its also really long to

 

   **Firex:** Well, I’m simply not interested, and I refuse to read something like this. Besides, the fic probably has incorrect characterisation, and so on so forth, it’s not like anyone who knew him well would actually write fanfiction about him.

 

 **Emo:** no for real this one is good you gotta

 

   **Firex:** I do not “gotta” and I refuse to read it.

 

 **Emo:** ur loss dude. I gotta go now i have work. Cya!

 

 **Firex** : Goodbye!

 

Azure sighed, browsing through the discord servers he was in. None were particularly active at the moment, which was rather depressing, and the few chats that were there didn’t particularly interest him. At this point, his boredom was such that he almost considered opening the amino app before shivering and making a face. _Never_ _again_ would he visit that cursed site. Hesitantly, he closed Discord and looked at the _Dream x Reader_ that Emo had suggested he read. _Angel in a Madhouse_ , an interesting name, written by _DerangedAngel_ , which actually sounded like a pretty good description of Dream if you asked him, and his hand hovered over the mouse, considering whether or not to actually start reading it.

 

 _No, Azure,_ he thought to himself, _there is a limit to how bizarre the things you read are going to be._

 

He instead pulled up Tumblr, scrolling through, and was content to do that for the lengthy period of all of five minutes, before reaching the bottom of his dash and getting bored. His eyes strayed to the tab open of the Dream x Reader fic before looking away. He was not going to read it.

 

_Limit the madness. The internet is weird enough without you reading X Reader fanfiction._

 

Two minutes later, he caved, boredom and a burning sense of curiosity driving him to read the description of the fic. It was a rather bland, average description, to be honest, nothing stuck out to him, but he really had nothing else to do bar perhaps hack JR again, but even that was getting old, and so, with a dejected sigh, he opened the fic.

 

Two hours later would find him writing a comment that hopefully gave both feedback and conveyed his love for the piece as he finished the fifth chapter, coming at just over 200,000 words in total, making Azure despair over the fact that there was no more. Then he remembered what it was he was despairing over and tried to forget about the fic, and how scarily in character and plausible it was by picking up his computer and updating his security, but the fic kept coming into his mind.

 

He could draw, incredibly well, and had gathered a large follower count on Tumblr by drawing various images of fictional characters in fact, and there was just one scene which was truly one of the most adorable things that Azure had read in a long time. Added to that that he had access to pictures and live feeds of Dream from various angles… Azure shook his head, as if the physical action would dispel the thought. Unfortunately for him, or fortunately depending on your point of view, it didn’t work, and he began considering it seriously.

 

Hesitantly picking up his tablet and pen, he pulled up the scene from chapter four that he’d particularly liked, one of Dream in the gardens of JR, looking straight into the reader’s eyes, his aura frightening yet curious, the gardens providing an exotic background to contrast beautifully with the soft yellows and golds that Dream favoured in his attire.

 

 _I’ll just do a quick sketch and forget about it,_ Azure thought, having fooled himself into thinking that once he’d done this short, fourty-minute sketch that _Angel in a Madhouse_ would stop haunting his mind, and he could move on to other, safer things, like Doki Doki Literature Club and BATIM, and FNaF, and not murderous angels who actually looked really good if he thought about it but _was not_ thinking about because that would be weird.

 

It was only when the sun began to set and he had to turn the light on lest he risk hurting his eyes that he realised he’d been at this for a couple of hours now, four hours to be precise, and his ‘quick sketch’ had turned into a full blown picture, lineless and perfectly coloured and shaded, that he realised that he was still at it.

 

Then he resisted the urge to scream into his pillow for an hour because he was a grown, mature adult, and also was not Cross, and went back to drawing because, perfectionist that he was, he could not leave an unfinished picture simply sitting there as a WIP. It turned out rather well, if he did say so himself, the lighting was good, proportions were accurate… It was one of his better works. And his better works generally ended up posted to his blog.

 

Should he…? Dream was likely to stalk the internet because of JR’s existence as a cult, and the need for public opinion to be either positive, fearful, or accepting… But they probably wouldn’t go to Tumblr, Azure reasoned, much less find his blog, and so, he uploaded the proper files, made a quick backup, and posted it, linking back to _Angel in a Madhouse_. Then, he had to consider; should he contact the author? Most authors would be glad to have fanart of their works done, so there should really be no harm in it…

 

He added another comment on the fourth chapter, the one which contained the scene he’d written, and typed out a simple message; _I really liked your fic, and made some fanart of it, which I hope is okay by you._ It was a short message, and he’d linked the Tumblr post too, in the likely event that _DerangelAngel_ would like to see it, then closed his laptop and decided it was high time to eat and also possibly get drunk off his ass to cope with what he just did.

 

\---

 

Dream, of course, sees the comments and replies to every one of them, delighted that someone is actually giving decent feedback and clearly adores his writing so much, and he gets the pleasant surprise of seeing himself drawn in a rather flattering and very accurate way; it may as well be a photograph for it’s lifelikeness, it’s that good. And so he strikes up a conversation with this mystery artist who draws him so beautifully. It’s a rather bizarre way of striking up a conversation, seeing as he’s only on AO3, and it’s all done via a comment thread, but eventually Firex introduces Dream to Discord, where they can talk more normally via the power of DMs.

 

Of course, Dream, not wanting to lose face when confronted with the realisation that he had no idea what Discord was, immediately went and made himself an account and skimmed through information on the website, and then proceeded to pretend that he’d been a longer user as so not to look like a complete newbie in front of Firex.

 

Their conversations are… interesting, often straying to rather bizarre topics such as coffee shops and running a small country and the price of buying an aristocrat’s entire estate if said aristocrat had a bounty on his head and also happened to like wearing expensive jewelry made from sandstone and tin, but generally centre around what they do, writing and drawing respectively. Dream, or Derangel as Firex calls him, is caught off guard when the subject of Tumblr is brought up about a month into their acquaintance seeing as he can’t really leave a conversation in DMs to look it up and make an account, so Firex ends up being the one to talk him through it over voice call.

 

Both of them are using voice distorters because they’re paranoid bastards, and so they finish the voice call without knowing the true identity of the other, assuming them to be a stranger, leading the two to actually relax quite a bit. Azure’s main fear is that this author whom he was starting to like more than platonically is actually someone like Nightmare or worse, _Error_ , and he knows that _they_ would never think to use a voice distorter. He never worries about Dream for even a second. Dream is just glad that his mystery friend, and crush, trusts him enough to voice call with him. The idea of the person on the other side using a voice distorter never really crosses his mind.

 

After that, Firex introduces Derangel to Emo and a few of his other internet friends, and invites him to his private discord server and a few public ones that he happens to be in, and Dream gets the idea to make a public discord server for _Angel in a Madhouse._

 

At this point, it’s been two months and two weeks since he started writing and the fic is _massively_ popular, so it makes sense that he’d want to make one, but the problem is that he’s a clueless baby who doesn’t know jackshit about making servers, so he enlists Firex’s help in making it raid proof and what permissions to give mods, so on so forth. Emo joins in as their guinea pig, because Firex owns the server and as such you can’t restrict him, and Derangel refused to be a guinea pig.

 

It is as they’re constructing the server and in a voice call that Dream discovers that Ink is Emo, because Ink, unlike he both Dream and Azure, doesn’t expect to find anyone who knows him in real life online, and as such doesn’t invest in things such as voice distorters, like a fool.

 

It is also as they’re constructing the server that Ink sees how fucking gay Derangel and Firex are for each other, and vows to get them together, because they’re so damn oblivious to each other’s subtle flirting.

 

Well, actually they aren’t that oblivious, but it would have taken them some time to get together had Ink not sighed loudly and told them to hurry up and date, to which they both awkwardly laughed and told him it isn’t like that, only it is, and when Emo has to work, Firex and Derangel are alone in the voice call and realise that wait, maybe Emo is right and we are really gay for each other! So thank Ink for them getting into a relationship.

 

Dream also decides to be kinder to his poor assistant who got him his boyfriend, and Ink has no idea why Dream is being nicer to him in real life, but he’s not one to look a gift horse in the mouth so he just accepts it and and keeps his mouth shut.

 

Azure and Dream also end up exchanging their real names, not the internet monikers and not a fake name either, so they both know the other as Dream and Azure, they just think that it’s a coincidence that they know two people named the same thing, seeing as Azure, being an offshoot of Blue and there surely being many Underswaps in the multiverse, would probably be a rather common name, and naming your child after the leader of an, ahem, _justice organisation,_ must have made the name Dream rather popular, much to the original Dream’s ire.

 

Over in Bandana Squad Land, they too are partaking in the fanfiction festivities! But on Wattpad because they are simple-minded fools. Cross is the one who primarily writes the fanfiction, all very bad all _Dream x Reader_ , and Error is the one who leaves encouraging, yet bitingly sarcastic comments instead of telling him like a normal person, despite Cross knowing his account name, which is, for your information, OWOOWOOWOOWO, or “4” for short because that’s just too many “owo”s.

 

Cross goes by TheKingOfBitterCandy, because as we all know he despises anything sweet and is bitter as fuck about literally everything that goes on, and his name is shortened to “Candy” by one of his readers, which disgusts him due to how sickly sweet it sounds and catches on annoyingly fast.

 

Nightmare is more of a read-and-leave-a-like person, so he just speeds through fics at the speed of light and clicks the like/vote/kudos button, before moving onto the next one, the only evidence he was ever reading such a fic in the “d0uchebag has left kudos!” emails that the writers get. He goes by Shower online, for the unique reason that he wanted his username to be d0uchebag and Error and Cross couldn’t exactly call him Douche in the servers they were in, and seeing as douche just happens to be French for shower, it was obviously the most logical and correct conclusion to draw.

 

These three idiots also happen to exist on Tumblr, because of course they do, and they know Firex, or they follow him at least. They mostly just grumble about how unfair it is that Firex can draw that much better than them even when they don’t practice or put any effort in because they’re lazy af, and when they see an invite to a public discord server with him and some random writer of _Dream x Reader_ fanfic they plan to raid the server like fucking assholes.

 

Then Nightmare actually reads _Angel in a Madhouse_ out of curiosity as to what the fic is like and is just. Shook. Because he likes this fic that isn’t absolute shit and also portrays his brother pretty clearly to some extent, also it shits on Ink quite a lot so that’s also a plus in his book. He promptly forces Cross and Error to read it because they’re still dead-set on raiding the server because they’re the worst boyfriends ever who don’t care about how much he admires this author, not that he’ll ever admit it. To their great horror, Cross and Error find themselves actually enjoying the fic, though Cross is also jealous that it gets more attention than his shitty fics, and, to Nightmare’s great relief, the three agree not to raid the server, which come to think of it would have been a really really stupid thing to do seeing as Firex and Derangel’s combined popularity would generate a lot of fans who’d be pissed if they appeared and raided a server.

 

They end up instead joining the server, and somehow get to chat with Firex and Derangel themselves and become friends. They have no idea how it happened but it’s cool to be able to chat with the big deal author, and also people are jealous of them which is a plus. They are completely unaware that the only reason Deragnel and Firex took any notice of them was because they both deduced the identities of the Bandana Squad through the shitty fanfic that Cross writes, and keep your enemies closer and all that bull. Well it’s mostly because Dream likes messing with the Bandana Squad and Azure only finds out their identities after they’ve talked for a while, and at that point he can’t really just cut off all contact for no reason.

 

Somehow, the topic of everyone’s relationships arise. Romantic relationships, to be more precise, somehow arising in a group DM chat with all six of them in it.

 

Emo is, as always, a loser, and doesn’t date anyone, so he gets laughed at until he reveals he works at JR making dating too dangerous for him to consider at which point they all joke that they’re going to go bust him out and get him a love life.

 

Shower, Candy, and 4 are in a poly relationship which comes as a surprise for literally everyone because those three regularly proclaim how they are worst enemies and squabble all the fucking time, but who are they to judge? The three are also roommates and apparently when they’re not online they’re all over each other, and are also currently piled over each other, with Shower at the bottom and 4 on top, and Candy leaning on them both.

 

Then, of course, Derangel and Firex are dating, which is common knowledge because they’re adorable and gay for each other publicly even if Firex gets shy sometimes, but the Bandana Squad get shocked when they find out that they’ve never actually met. Hell they’ve never _skyped_ , so they don’t know if the other is ugly or maybe even their arch nemesis from another planet, or their doppelganger! The two of them laugh off the Bandana Squad’s concerns because they don’t need to meet to be in a happy relationship, but the thought stays in their minds.

 

It’s only in a DM chat between just the two of them after the voice call with all of them in it that the two actually talk about meeting in person. There’s no real reason not to; they’re both adults who can get to AUs rather easily due to the clever invention of bus stops in every AU where a universe hopping bus stops, and so long as they both have some time free in their schedules, why not?

 

They agree to meet up in a pretty secluded AU, a Swapfell post No Mercy Run, so there’s sure to be little to no conflict here, and it’s situated far away enough from Justice Reigns’ base that they’ve not invaded this little AU, and JR isn’t known within it.

 

Azure arrives first, dressed well, in his best clothes to be exact, because he’s a dork who wants to look good to his datemate, who he’s very excited to meet in person. They’ve not skyped, and have no idea what each other look like, and Azure blames himself for being paranoid for this, but he’s relatively sure he’ll be able to recognise his voice, somewhat.

 

And Dream should be able to recognise his voice too, despite it being disguised at the beginning, as he slowly grew to trust Dream he distorted his voice less and less, thankful that neither Ink nor the Bandana Squad knew what his real voice sounded like, or had had enough exposure to it to recognise it in any case. The gradual change should have stopped them from realising that he’d been using a voice distorter at all.

 

He sat in a table in the corner, next to the window, the one they’d booked together, agreeing that it would have a good view of outside and let them both see if the other was coming; they both knew that they were Sans variants, though Dream was apparently a rather different one, and seeing as the Sans in this timeline was dead, they’d know who the other was.

 

He gazed out the window, checking his watch. He was a little early, but only by about 10 minutes or so, close enough to the booking time that he’d almost been expecting Dream to already be there when he arrived.

The ten minutes that he waits are filled with nerves and excitement, both for obvious reasons. Then, out the window, he spots golden wings, and his mind blanks. His heart is pounding in his ears, _the_ _leader of JR has no place being here,_ the AU was chosen _because_ it was secluded and away from JR’s influence.

 

Then, to his even greater horror, Dream enters the cafe.

 

On Dream’s end, all is going rather well, actually. He’s on time exactly, as usual, and in an AU such as this he won’t be recognised, so he can go on his date with Azure without being bothered. There is, of course, the slight problem that if Azure knows him as the leader of JR, Azure will probably be a little scared, but there’s really nothing he can do about that now.

 

He walks into the little cafe, and immediately spots the table which he’s booked, where a brown haired human is sitting, shoulders hunched and head in his hands, obscuring his face. He seemed to be shaking too, probably nervous to be meeting him.

 

That or he was frightened because Dream _was_ regarded as a lunatic in the multiverse, but Dream didn’t think of that in that moment, instead walking towards the table where Azure was hunched over. Azure, of course, looks up, straight into Dream’s eyes, and the both of them _freak_ _the_ _fuck out,_ because neither of them were expecting the other at all.

 

It’s at that moment that Azure makes a disbelieving comment about fanfiction, and Dream being, well Dream, as the reason it was so in character, making Dream laugh, because this he knows, this is common, it’s what he’s come to expect from his datemate.

 

And Dream sits down in the chair opposite Azure, and they chat, and it’s kind of awkward because of course it is, but they know each other, and despite who they are in real life, and what their occupations are, they’re in love nonetheless.

 

They talk, a lot, and there’s a lot of careful treading on Azure’s part, because they’re in person and Dream can snap his neck which is something he’s very, very aware of. Then Dream sighs because Azure is being boring, he didn’t fall in love with someone as jumpy as Ink, so if he’d just stop it and act _normally_ that would be nice.

 

At this point Azure really has nothing left to lose, apart from his life, but he’s just found out that his datemate isn’t _named_ _after_ the leader of JR but in fact _is_  the leader of JR, so he tries… acting somewhat normally. Acting how he would act if he didn’t know who Dream truly was, essentially.

 

They keep talking, conversation coming surprisingly easily once Azure gets over his fear, and they head over to Waterfall to talk, because it’s quiet there, and the likeliness of people being there with them is incredibly low, and it’s also a beautiful location, Azure’s favourite in the Underground in fact.

And it’s there, in the low lighting, that they have their first kiss, as echo flowers whisper  _I love you_ over and over.

 


End file.
